Aldus Manutius, scholar-printer (c.1445-1515)

Aldo Manuzio (Aldus, as he was usually known, from the Latin
form of his name) was the first and most celebrated of the
scholar-printers of the Renaissance, a role defined by H George
Fletcher as follows:

'… a professional who printed his own works or had some hand in
the editorial content of the books that issued from his press,
either as editor, commentator, or translator; moreover, he was
thoroughly trained in the classical languages and printed classical
and Biblical texts from manuscripts that he himself edited,
emended, or translated into Latin from Greek, occasionally writing
commentaries on them; finally, he is someone whose reputation in
typography is as great today as is his renown in scholarship.'
(Fletcher, 'New Aldine Studies', p.19)

Many of the early printers, like the goldsmith Johann Gutenberg,
had a background in the crafts necessary for the technological
aspects of printing. Of Aldus' predecessors in Venice, for
instance, Nicholas Jenson was a metalworker, and Erhard Ratdolt
came from a family of woodcarvers. Aldus, however, was first and
foremost a scholar. After a successful career studying and teaching
in Italy, he turned to an entirely new occupation as a publisher at
the age of 40. He stated many times that his goal was to make
available in print the classic texts of the ancient world which so
excited Renaissance humanists.

Aldus' printing career began in Venice in 1495. The city had
already become the centre of the European book trade: with its
close connections to nearby universities, its trade networks, and
its cosmopolitan community of scholars, including many Greeks
exiled after the fall of Constantinople, it was the ideal place for
what he wanted to achieve.

Three signficant Aldus books

Three books are featured here to represent the key aspects of
Aldus' career:

His mission to publish scholarly editions of the Greek
classics

His relationship with contemporary humanists such as Pietro
Bembo

His seminal series of 'pocket editions' of canonical
texts.

It is no coincidence that each item also represents an important
moment in the history of the book. Aldus' edition of Aristotle
epitomises the role of printing in re-introducing original Greek
texts to the western world after centuries of unavailability. 'De
Aetna' marks the first appearance of the font named 'Bembo' after
the author, a Roman type still in use today. Small formats like
that of the Aldine 'Petrarch' liberated books from the study and
brought them into everyday life.

It was his enthusiasm for spreading knowledge of Greek in
particular that drove Aldus to print, and his edition of the
complete works of Aristotle is a typical — perhaps the supreme —
example of the kind of scholarly folio volumes he produced in the
early years of his career. The 'editio princeps' (first printed
edition) of Aristotle's works in the original Greek was one of the
earliest he undertook. The first volume, the 'Organon', or
Aristotle's six treatises on logic, appeared in 1495, with four
subsequent volumes containing the rest of Aristotle's works
published by 1498.

Shown above is the first leaf of the 'Categories', the first
Aristotelian text in the 'Organon'. Few of Aldus' publications
would contain the kinds of decorated borders and capitals used
here. Aldus' Greek fonts were as widely imitated as his Roman ones
and were also based on contemporary scholarly calligraphy. However
they differ from the modern standard, particularly in their use of
ligatures to join letters and accents together, so that his Greek
books are less readable today.

In all, Aldus produced some 30 'editiones principes' of major
Greek authors. Ever the teacher, he also published Greek grammars
and other books to help those who wanted to learn the language.

Pietro Bembo: 'De Aetna'

Pietro Bembo, a humanist from a noble Venetian family, was one
of Aldus' most important collaborators, supplying him with the
manuscript for the 'Erotemata', a treatise on Greek grammar by
Constantine Lascaris which was probably the first book Aldus
printed. 'De Aetna' ('On Etna') was inspired by the trip to Sicily
on which Bembo collected the 'Erotemata' manuscript. This work, a
Latin dialogue between Pietro and his father, also a noted scholar,
about their trip to Mount Etna, is in itself a fairly insignificant
example of humanist imitation of the classical style. Its
importance for modern readers lies in the design of the book: it
marks the first appearance of the Roman font that would be called
'Bembo' and is still in use today, revived by the great typographer
Stanley Morison as Monotype Bembo.

Aldus was not the first to use Roman type, but it was Aldine
Roman that became most influential. The type was cut by Francesco
Griffo, who designed all of Aldus' major fonts, including the Greek
and italic shown above and below. Griffo's role in the design of
Aldus' books was as important as that of Aldus himself. Perhaps he
felt underestimated — he would break with Aldus in 1503, and cut
similar type for a rival printer. Griffo disappears from history in
1516 when he was accused of murdering his son-in-law with an iron
bar — perhaps one of the very punches he used for cutting type?

In its perfect simplicity, the design of Aldus and Griffo
provided a model for how printed books should look that has lasted
for 500 years. The image shown above highlights their use of new
forms of punctuation that would become standard: this is the first
appearance in print of the semi-colon.

The Aldine 'Petrarch'

In 1501 Aldus began to publish a series of books in octavo
format that would become the quintessential Aldine editions. He
called them 'libelli portatiles' ('portable little books'), and
they consisted of the works of noted authors stripped of the
commentaries that traditionally surrounded them, printed in an
italic font that imitated the finest humanist calligraphy: classic
texts made new for his contemporary readers.

Whereas scholarly tomes such as Aldus' own Aristotle edition
were large volumes designed for use in the study, his 'Petrarch' —
an 'enchiridion' (handbook) — could be taken anywhere. The obvious
point of comparison for modern readers is with paperback series of
'classics', although Aldus' books were not noticeably cheap and
were aimed at the intellectual rather than the man in the street.
'Portable' books had been printed before, but always for devotional
purposes: Aldus gave the same convenience to a readership of
Renaissance humanists, who were as likely to be travelling around
Europe or passing the time at court as they were to be safely
ensconced in libraries.

As a vernacular text, this edition of Petrarch's poetry was
untypical of Aldus' output. But Petrarch, like Dante (whose 'Divine
Comedy' would be issued in the octavo series in 1502) was central
to the developing Italian literary canon. This edition was a
controversial one: Pietro Bembo, again working with Aldus, produced
a text from a manuscript 'in the Poet's own hand', which not only
removed the usual commentaries but applied humanist methods of
textual editing to produce some striking new readings which had to
be justified in a postscript.

The influence of the Aldine Press affected every part of the
book trade. Aldus was a model for scholar-printers across Europe
such as Josse Badius, the Estienne family, and Christopher Plantin,
and later for the university presses. Typographers and designers
have constantly returned to Aldus' books, imitating and being
inspired by his minimalist design. But perhaps the real heirs of
Aldus Manutius are all those who share his primary motivation — to
make accessible the great works of the past to a contemporary
audience.

The dolphin and anchor

No discussion of Aldus would be complete without a mention of
his famous device, the
dolphin and anchor. Originating from a Roman medal given to him
by Pietro Bembo, the image was used by Aldus to symbolise his
publishing achievement of 'producing much, but slowly'. The device
would become the stamp of an Aldine book, and Aldus yet again set a
fashion other printers would follow in using it to identify his
publications. First used in 1501, the device does not occur in the
three books above (the image shown here is from his 1502 editio
princeps of Sophocles, one of its earliest appearances)

Aldine Press books in the National Library of Scotland

The Library holds over 40 editions of books printed by Aldus
before his death in 1515, with more than one copy of some. It also
holds many Aldine Press books printed after Aldus' death, when the
firm was carried on first by his business partner Andrea de
Torresani and later by his son Paolo Manuzio, and examples of the
'pirate' or 'counterfeit' editions produced by rival printers.

The publication 'Short-title catalogue of Foreign Books printed
up to 1600 … Now in the National Library of Scotland' (shelved in
the Special Collections Reading
Room) contains details of all Aldine items acquired before
1970. Later acquisitions, including many Aldine books in the
Newhailes collection, are on the online catalogue, as are many
of the entries in the Short-Title Catalogue (with more being added
as retroconversion takes place). The easiest way to find books
printed by Aldus in the online catalogue is to search using imprint
details, in their original languages, as keywords in Advanced
Search.